Moonglow: A Novel

Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession, made to his grandson, of a man the narrator refers to only as "my grandfather". It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and desire and ordinary love, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at mid-century and, above all, of the destructive impact - and the creative power - of the keeping of secrets and the telling of lies.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel

For 60 years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the federal district of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the district is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.

Summerland: A Novel

Ethan Feld is having a terrible summer: His father has moved them to Clam Island, Washington, where Ethan has quickly established himself as the least gifted baseball player the island has ever seen. Ethan's luck begins to change, however, when a mysterious baseball scout named Ringfinger Brown and a 765-year-old werefox enter his life, dragging Ethan into another world called the Summerlands.

Wonder Boys

A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.

Gentlemen of the Road

They're an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950.

The Kingdom of Speech

Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech - not evolution - is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements.

Telegraph Avenue: A Novel

As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there - longtime friends, bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, a pair of semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed, between them, more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart - half tavern, half temple - stands Brokeland Records.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, they create the Escapist.

Here I Am: A Novel

Unfolding over four tumultuous weeks in present-day Washington, DC, Here I Am is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. As Jacob and Julia Bloch and their three sons are forced to confront the distances between the lives they think they want and the lives they are living, a catastrophic earthquake sets in motion a quickly escalating conflict in the Middle East. At stake is the meaning of home - and the fundamental question of how much aliveness one can bear.

The Crossing: The Border Trilogy Book 2

Sixteen-year-old Billy and his brother Boyd are fascinated by an elusive wolf that has been marauding his family's ranch. Billy captures the animal - but rather than kill it, sets out impulsively for the mountains of Mexico to return it to where it came from. Billy returns, finding himself and his world have irrevocably changed. His loss of innocence has come at a price, and once again the border beckons with its desolate beauty and cruel promise.

The Nix: A Novel

It's 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson - college professor, stalled writer - has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn't seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she's reappeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the Internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high school sweetheart.

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

Forty years ago Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred systematically when forced to make judgments about uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made Michael Lewis' work possible.

Everything Is Illuminated

Jonathan is a Jewish college student searching Europe for the one person he believes can explain his roots. Alex, a lover of all things American and unsurpassed butcher of the English language, is his lovable Ukrainian guide. On their quixotic quest, the two young men look for Augustine, a woman who might have saved Jonathan's grandfather from the Nazis. As past and present merge, hysterically funny moments collide with great tragedy, and an unforgettable story of one family's extraordinary history unfolds.

On the Move: A Life

From its opening minutes on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California, where he struggled with drug addiction, and then in New York, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, we see how his engagement with patients comes to define his life.

The Corrections: A Novel

The Corrections is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century--a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost 50 years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku: the curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.

The David Foster Wallace Reader

Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.

Suttree

No discussion of great modern authors is complete without mention of Cormac McCarthy, whose rare and blazing talent makes his every work a true literary event. A grand addition to the American literary canon, Suttree introduces readers to Cornelius Suttree, a man who abandons his affluent family to live among a dissolute array of vagabonds along the Tennessee river.

No Baggage: A Minimalist Tale of Love and Wandering

No Baggage is a memoir that will resonate with adventurers and homebodies alike - it's at once a romance, a travelogue, and a bright, modern take on the age-old questions: How do you find the courage to explore beyond your comfort zone? Can you love someone without the need for commitment or any expectations for the future?

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Author of the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most provocative American stylists to emerge in the last century. The striking novel Blood Meridian offers an unflinching narrative of the brutality that accompanied the push west on the 1850s Texas frontier.

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

Pulitzer Prize, General nonfiction, 2016. When Jordan granted amnesty to a group of political prisoners in 1999, it little realized that among them was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist mastermind and soon the architect of an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East. In Black Flags, an unprecedented account of the rise of ISIS, Joby Warrick shows how the zeal of this one man and the strategic mistakes of Presidents Bush and Obama led to the banner of ISIS being raised over huge swaths of Syria and Iraq.

The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction

An inquisitive observer, thoughtful commentator, and assiduous craftsman, Neil Gaiman has long been celebrated for the sharp intellect and startling imagination that informs his fiction. Now The View from the Cheap Seats brings together, for the first time ever, more than 60 works of his outstanding nonfiction on topics and people close to his heart.

The American Civil War

Between 1861 and 1865, the clash of the greatest armies the Western hemisphere had ever seen turned small towns, little-known streams, and obscure meadows in the American countryside into names we will always remember. In those great battles, those streams ran red with blood-and the United States was truly born.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Golden Globe-winning actor Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) performs Truman Capote's masterstroke about a young writer's charmed fascination with his unorthodox neighbor, the "American geisha" Holly Golightly. Holly - a World War II-era society girl in her late teens - survives via socialization, attending parties and restaurants with men from the wealthy upper class who also provide her with money and expensive gifts. Over the course of the novella, the seemingly shallow Holly slowly opens up to the curious protagonist.

Audible Editor Reviews

Whether reflecting on his role as son, brother, husband, or father, Chabon's delightful essays are provocative and insightful. This wide-ranging collection touches on everything from becoming a father to losing a father-in-law (through divorce); from musings on a quirky childhood to a discussion of what society considers to be a "good father" today. He also describes his quandary over what to do with his four children's prolific artwork. By turns poignant and witty, Chabon is a comfortable, inviting narrator. His relaxed and conversational style is shot through with occasional fervent moments. He's unhurried yet precise in his pacing and phrasing, and most of all likably, often ruefully, humorous.

Publisher's Summary

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author offers his first major work of nonfiction, an autobiographical narrative as inventive, beautiful, and powerful as his acclaimed, award-winning fiction.

Manhood for Amateurs is the first sustained work of personal writing from Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and his vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own: as a series of reflections, regrets, and re-examinations, each sparked by an encounter, in the present, that holds some legacy of the past.

What does it mean to be a man today? As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor.

At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.

What the Critics Say

"Both lyrical and side-splittingly funny.... Readers seeking the intelligence of Updike; the gentle, brainy appeal of Sedaris; or the literary virtuosity of Nabokov will thoroughly enjoy." (Library Journal)

"Chabon takes a big, fat swing at the essay form with his second collection and achieves success....These warm and thoughtful essays underscore just how good a wordsmith Chabon is-regardless of the form he chooses." (Booklist)

"Wry and heartfelt, Chabon's riffs uncover brand-new insights in even the most quotidian subjects....He applies an unusual level of wit and candor to the form." (Kirkus Reviews)

I don't think that the other reviewers actually read this book. Perhaps it is because Michael Chabon and I were born around the same time and have lived some similar experiences, but I thought this book was fantastic. I kept thinking as I would read a particular passage,"yes...I wish I had thought of that" or "I wish I could write like that". It is beautifully written essays about life that are remarkably ordinary and profound at the same time. I love his reading voice too. This is a book that I have now listened to several times and I will keep it on my ipod for a long time hence as well. Thoroughly delightful.

Fatherhood is about constant failure. We will be impatient when we should be wise. Focussed on trivial matters when we should be hanging out with our kids. Talking when we should be listening. Distracted when we should be focussed. Chabon is one of my favorite novelists, a beautiful and funny writer. His stories of growing up in a divorced household in the 1970s rang true to my own (although Chabon is about 6 years older) - we both swam through endless amounts of pop culture crap. His attempts to create a stable and invigorating home life (4 kids and a writing spouse) provide a funny roadmap and mirror the rest of us amateur dads, husbands, and guys.

This was a quick read book of essays by and about author Michael Chabon's life.

Chabon was surprisingly revealing. (I found myself wondering if I were Michael Chabon's kid, would I want to read something that talks so frankly about my parent's sex life or pot-smoking habits? But, that's part of what makes it interesting.) And, while it seemed kind of light weight and quick-to-digest at the time, even after several weeks I still find myself thinking about and talking about some of his essays with others.

I especially enjoyed the essay about the clock of the long now and how when we were growing up, people actively talked about and imagined the future - what it would be like, look like, the new ways in which people would interact with technology. Chabon said that now, no one thinks about the future - perhaps because daily life is all changing so fast.

I'm a landscape architect by profession and an avid listener of audio books ! I particularly love the historical based fiction series, like Courteney, McCammon, and Gabaldon,. I listen in the car, while designing in my studio and most evenings.

As a long time fan of Michael Chabon and his wife Ayelet Waldman, I felt some trepidation reading his memoir. But my hestitation soon evaporated as I entered into his funny and insightful memories and thoughts.Mr. Chabon narrates his own story giving it more depth and feeling. He is a funny smart and modest man living a full life as a father, husband and writer.His insights are worth listening to and this audio book was a pleasure to listen to.

I had moments where I laughed so hard and others where I stopped while I was running on the trail and sat and wept as the images of my life, my own kids, my own father swept over me. What a profound writer and thinker. Outstanding!!!

I tried this one because I enjoyed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay so much.It was a pleasure to hear him tell his stories, in his own words - his life experience that helped shape that magnificent story.The only thing I didn't really care for was the "series of short stories" aspect of it. Why I expected a solid through-line or a planned out story arc I don't know, other than I really admired it in his other book. I will certainly be checking out his other books, but eventually - not right away. I need to be ready to hear about another terrible death of a dog.

If you grew up in the 70's or Early 80's like I did. This book is filled with great storytelling , thoughtfulness and honesty to those moments when we as men realize we don't know it all and our Dad's didn't either. Learning that to most son's our dad is a hero, invincible, unchanging, and steadfast. But this book put great light on things for me. To learn to forgive my father for things he didn't understand, to enable my son to be who he is and not what I think he should be. I THANK Michael Chabon for writing this book, it made me chuckle at times, even cringe, especially THINK about how I raise my son.

Where does Manhood for Amateurs rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Manhood for Amateurs ranks in the top tier of audiobooks I've listened to thus far.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Manhood for Amateurs?

I especially loved the piece on pockets and pocketbooks

What about Michael Chabon’s performance did you like?

He read it as if he had read it because he had and it worked well.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, that would be ridiculous.

Any additional comments?

Chabon's life hasn't been more amazing than other people, but his expressions of his feelings and experiences are wonderful. His writing illuminate so many great points about life and being a person amongst a huge society.